Equal Chances: Every Blogger Starts From The Same Point

It’s human nature to look at someone and say, “Gee. I wish I had what he has.”

We measure ourselves against others in almost every aspect of our life.

We want hair like those shampoo models we see on TV.

We want a body like our favorite celebrity.

We want a car, or a house like the neighbor’s.

And we want a blog like our favorite A-List blogger.

The thing is, though, in all those other aspects of life, we’re realistic in our expectations. You may wish you had hair like Jennifer Aniston’s but if you were born with dark, curly hair, you understand it’s going to take a lot of time and money to straighten your hair, change the color, and maintain that style. You may wish you had the neighbor’s Lamborghini, but you realize how much work it takes to earn that kind of money.

But when it comes to that A-List blog, a lot of bloggers think all they have to do is “want” it, and it’s going to magically appear. When it doesn’t, when it takes much longer than they thought to even start develop a trickle of traffic, they get frustrated and give up.

Those A-list bloggers all make it look so easy, but the truth is, at some point, they all had to start at zero, just like you. They had zero content on their blog. They had zero traffic coming in. They made zero dollars every month.

Here’s what you need to do to get yourself on the A-list:

Be realistic: It didn’t happen over night for them and it’s not going to happen over night for you. Many of the A-list bloggers you’re watching have been blogging for 10 years or more. And some of their A-list blogs are not their first attempts. Plan to blog for at least 6 months before you start seeing steady, measurable traffic, and another year or more before you start producing steady, measurable income.

Stop worrying: Stop worrying about how much traffic that A-list blogger gets and how many comments and subscribers and followers he has. You can drive yourself crazy trying to compete and the truth is – you can’t compete. You’re better off spending your time focusing on being unique.

You also need to stop worrying about being “perfect” like that A-list blogger. Of course his content is engaging and compelling, he’s been working at developing his own unique blogging voice for years. But take a tour through any A-list blogger’s archives and you see that in the beginning his content was just as sketchy as yours. So if you’re waiting until you create the perfect post before you publish, don’t. Just get busy publishing and work on your writing skills as you go.

Get to work: It’s time to stop obsessing over those A-list bloggers and get to work. Everybody starts at zero but nobody gets success handed to them on a silver platter. Focus on building your own blog and forget about that other blogger. And with a little luck and a lot of hard work, you could be on the A-list yourself next year.

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7 Comments

Rew

I’ve always said that its easy to make something better, but its incredibly hard to start. Sure it’s easy to see what ad converts better when you have lots of traffic coming in, but its hard to get that traffic going. Starting from zero sucks, but it does get better. It just takes time.

Sherrilynne Starkie

Sound advice here. And you are entirely right. Blogging is hard work and it takes talent and time to develop skills. There are very few overnight successes. I never dreamed when I started blogging seven years ago that I’d still be at it now. But I still love and the benefits for my business and career have been huge.

David Middleton (louis) On Linkedin Profile

Powerful advice, it takes time to build an on line presence. Write with passion and content that is real and others can relate too, the rest will follow, money is not the driving force but it helps ;)

Kathryn Martone

This article gave good advice for the psychology behind it but not to help people figure out how to generate more traffic. I have been blogging for 3 years and the evolution was slow… Then, out of nowhere.. It just sort of took off! But I do wish I had known some good tips about how to gain a bigger audience when I was starting ..

John

Excellent article! Thanks for this reminder that everyone starts from the exact same point: zero.

With hard work and dedication, anything is possible!

It motivates me to get back to work and build my own success :)

Dana

I used to worry a lot about while watching at other people success. I was spending literally hours wondering how they were getting that much traffic to their own website. Then I realized that spending so much time worrying was not going to help me grow my audience. So I just stopped worrying and started working instead!

Ivin Viljoen

I think your advise is sound here Steven. You will surely drive yourself mad comparing yourself to others. Truth is: doesn’t matter what niche you’re in, every person has something unique to offer, and that is experience. Every person has different ones and it carries with it different results.